


Rabbit's Garden

by AmyNChan



Category: Winnie The Pooh
Genre: Gen, I identify with him a bit, Just a bit of understanding from friends, looking at Rabbit's personality, mega mega friendship here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-13
Updated: 2017-02-13
Packaged: 2018-09-24 00:44:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9692162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmyNChan/pseuds/AmyNChan
Summary: “My garden,” bemoaned Rabbit.  “It’s ruined!”





	

**Author's Note:**

> I don't own Winnie the Pooh

Rabbit stood in front of his burrow, marveling at his garden.  The rutabagas were just about ready to be picked and the carrots were calling his name.  The heads of lettuce were nicely lined up in a row and the tomato vines looked absolutely wonderful.  Weeks of watering and delicate care bestowed upon the foods were finally coming to harvest, and the creature of the forest couldn’t be more thrilled with the results.

Perhaps the tomatoes could go in a sauce or salsa.  For whatever strange reason, Owl absolutely loved the stuff.  As did Gopher.

Piglet, Rabbit knew, was just getting over a cold.  Perhaps Rabbit could wash and cut up a few rutabagas for their friend and hope he would reap the many benefits.  Maybe in a stew?  He supposed it would be for the best, and knew he might as well make enough for two.  Pooh had looked like he wasn’t feeling all that great either last Rabbit had checked.

Carrots were his personal favorite treat, but whenever Roo came by, Rabbit always made sure to keep a nice supply of them.  There were times when the youngster would come by and try to see what new things could be done with a carrot, and so the two had made a few carrot cakes and other confections using the plant.  It was a more enjoyable past time of Rabbit’s.

Eeyore often came by and Rabbit almost always made sure to let him have some of his garden’s efforts.  He often hoped that the hard work and diligence he poured into his garden and the part of it he would give to Eeyore would show the donkey that he was indeed a part of their group and appreciated.  For some reason, Eeyore preferred lettuce over everything else, so Rabbit made sure to grow them whenever they were in season.

However, he could do none of those things if he didn’t get started with harvesting everything that was ready to be placed in his wheelbarrow.  Rabbit gave a contented sigh as he made his way to the carrots.

“All right, you,” he said to his garden.  “Let’s get you all squared away.”

Rabbit worked for the better part of the morning on the orange vegetable alone.  Several of them simply would not allow themselves to be uprooted, but he persisted.  Eventually, all of the carrots lay stacked neatly in his wheelbarrow.

The rabbit smiled as he viewed his handiwork.  While it was only a small portion done of what he wanted to do, he still felt immense pride at what he had accomplished.  He now had to move the carrots inside, sort and ready them for washing, return outside and begin with the—

“LOOK OUT, LONG-EARS!”

Jolted from his plan, Rabbit turned around, hoping to prevent anything truly chaotic from happening to his garden, but was too late.  A blur of orange and black and yellow and a literal avalanche of rocks came careening into him and his garden.

“That was fun!  Let’s do it again!”

That was Roo’s voice.

“Yeah!  But next time, you gotta work on your bounce!”

That was Tigger’s.

Everything after that was lost on Rabbit.  He knew pretty much what happened and didn’t want to open his eyes to confirm it.

But open his eyes he did.  And confirm it he did.

The tomatoes were bruised and broken, several of them missing from the vine and even more leaking juice.

The rutabaga patch had been hit with some of the larger rocks, dirt upturned and a particularly massive boulder effectively crushing many of the plants which had remained in the ground during the assault.

The lettuce heads were bruised all over, some of them even ripped by the sheer force of impact, and nearly none of them usable.

His wheelbarrow of carrots had been knocked over, several of them snapped from the fall and others broken from the rocks.

The wheelbarrow itself was on its side and Rabbit simply knew that the wheel had finally broken.

And he was feet away, having been carted off by the ever-bouncing Tigger.

“My garden,” bemoaned Rabbit.  “It’s ruined!”

“Aw, don’t be that way, Long-ears!” said Tigger.  Evidently, the bouncing lunatic couldn’t have noticed the utter disaster that his garden had become in less than a minute.    How months of hard work, dedication in weather fair and violent, constant watering and pruning, had gone from perfect to horrific in such a short amount of time.  “It’s not that bad!”

“Not that bad?  Not that bad!” huffed Rabbit, finally shoving Tigger off of him.  Ignoring the duo, he rushed to the carrots, the closest thing.  It was no use.  So many of them were ruined.  Next the rutabagas.  So many crushed.  The lettuce heads.  So many shredded.  The tomatoes.  So many broken.  “It’s a disaster!”

“Aw, come on,” encouraged Tigger, clearly trying to turn a disaster like this into something normal.  “Look, this carrot made it!”

Rabbit turned to face what he was supposed to consider a friend to find him holding up one limp carrot, not broken, but certainly not usable.

Rabbit wanted to scream.

And maybe he did, a little, if Tigger’s and Roo’s startled looks were anything to go by.

Furious, Rabbit turned tail and went inside his house, slamming the door behind him.  He slumped his back against the door to prevent anyone from coming inside while he was stewing.  His friends had tried that before and it had not ended well for anyone.  He needed space.

“Jeesh, I wonder what’s wrong with _him_.”

Rabbit wanted to scream again.

Instead, he shoved away from the door and walked over to his bed.  On it lay a notebook, one that he had been going through the night previous.

Before his garden had been so utterly and completely destroyed.

Rabbit flipped open the notebook and gazed longingly inside. They were plans.  Plans for the next batch of gardening, with new plants that would serve new purposes.  Pumpkins so everyone could have a nice Jack-o-Lantern for Halloween.  Yams for Lumpy, who had never had one before.  He had even put corn on the list because he knew just how much Tigger liked popcorn!

But now he was left wondering if his efforts were even worth it.

Two out of five times, something would come to completely wreck his garden.  Usually, the attacks were brought on by the many misadventures of his friends.  And while he appreciated the fact that none of his friends got hurt, he couldn’t shake the fact that none of them seemed to care when days, weeks, _months_ of his effort would be completely in shambles.

And then it would still take them a while to wonder _why_ he would get so upset.

He tried so very hard to have one thing he was good at.  He tried to take care of his friends in the best way he knew how.  He tried to keep them out of trouble, remind them of common sense from time to time, and provide healthy foods for the whole community.  And there were so many times where his friends would not listen to him, or simply accuse him of being a spoil-sport.

But he wasn’t.  He wanted to help.  He wanted to participate.  And he tried so very hard to get in the spirit of adventure whenever he was invited along.  But he needed structure and rules to follow to make him feel at east.  And these were two things which the rest of his friends did not understand.

Rabbit made a schedule for his garden.  That made him feel at ease, a little more secure.  Whenever his plants would come to term successfully, his schedule had a purpose, a meaning.  He could help his friends by being himself.

But then things like _this_ would happen.  The unexpected. The unforeseen.  And the dangerous.

Rabbit flipped through his notebook, where he had kept track of all of his gardens for the past five years.  In it, he had marked every successful garden and every failure.

He tried so hard not to look at the failures.

Three springs ago, Kanga had gotten green beans in perfect condition.  She had used them as a side dish in a party for everyone to attend.  Rabbit had been worried about coasters and the like, trying not to spoil Kanga’s furniture, but he could deal with the rolling of eyes when he knew that they were all enjoying something he grew himself.

Four summers ago, Christopher Robbin had stopped by to pick up some strawberries, which he used for the hero party that celebrated both Pooh and Piglet.  Everybody loved the cake and the freshness of the berries.

Last autumn, the pumpkins had been a hit for Jack-o-Lanterns, and everyone had gotten a pumpkin that looked like them.  Well, Rabbit had felt a bit of mocking when it came to his own pumpkin, but when he had seen his friends so excited over theirs, he pushed the annoyance to the back of his mind.  Well, the irritation of everyone rejecting the healthy vegetables as a substitute for Halloween candy had stung him for a while, but the candy had been retrieved and all had ended up well with the world.

Memories like that calmed Rabbit down a bit.  He was uptight about his garden.  He was a stickler for the rules.  But when those things about him brought around such happy memories…  when his time and effort were used to make other people smile…  that was when he found it in himself to start a new garden.  That was when he knew that if he didn’t make fresh fruits and vegetables, no one really would, and then where would they be?

Slightly more calm, Rabbit analyzed the situation.  He would need to clear the rocks out of the path and remove the ruined vegetables.  Maybe, if he was lucky, he would find at least a few things salvageable, but he really doubted it.  But more importantly than that, he would need to turn over the dirt and make sure that he had enough space and nutrients therein to start his autumn garden.

Rabbit placed the notebook back on his bed and stood.  The work wouldn’t get done by itself, he knew, and he would have to get started if he wanted to make a sizeable dent before sundown.

Some leftover spite fueling him, he made his way to the front door and opened it.  He expected an apology note of some sort—Tigger often did that after a mishap like this—but found instead that the two bouncing buddies had begun to pile the rocks outside of Rabbit’s garden.

“Huh?” asked Rabbit.  The noise gathered the attention from the two, who seemed surprised at his entrance.

“Oh…  uh, hey Long-ears…” said Tigger.

“We’re building a wall!” added Roo.

Rabbit blinked.  “A wall?”

“Yeah, to protect your garden!” claimed Roo again.  He was already bouncing over to grab Rabbit’s hand, pulling him along.  “Look and see!  It was Tigger’s idea!”

“Tigger’s…?”

Curious, Rabbit looked at Tigger.   “Well, we thought that if you had a wall, your garden wouldn’t get so smashed up all the time.”

While he appreciated the sentiment, Rabbit wasn’t impressed with the execution.  He glanced towards his ruined garden, still littered with rocks.  A great many of them had been removed from that afternoon, but there was still a lot to be done.

But Tigger and Roo had done far more than he had expected in terms of attempting to apologize.  The least he had expected was a note, the most was waiting for him to come outside to apologize properly.

“Wait right there,” said Rabbit as he hurried back inside.  His friends were destructive and catastrophic.  They were chaos and confusion.  They had complete disregard for his schedules and how he liked to live his life.

But they were also genuine and empathetic.  They struggled to do what was right and did their best all the time.  Even if it was sometimes misguided, they always tried their hardest to do the right thing.  And that was why he tried so hard in return to be the best friend he could be to them.  With the things he knew how to do.

He returned to Roo and Tigger with hats for each of them.  Having one already on his head, he plopped a wide brim hat on top of Roo’s and Tigger’s heads.  To his surprise, they fit nicely.

“You’re going to burn if you work outside with no protection,” said Rabbit.  He turned to his garden.  It wasn’t ideal and he wasn’t necessarily happy with it, but now he had a plan and he could use today to help Roo and Tigger build that wall.  He could empty the garden of ruined vegetables tomorrow.

“Cool!” cried Roo.  “A new hat!”

“Hoo hoo hoo hoo!  We’re gonna build the biggest, most toughest wall this garden has ever had protecting it!  Just watch, Long-ears!”

Rabbit somehow doubted it, but when they finished the task and he looked over at the new wall surrounding his garden, he couldn’t help but feel it was perfect.

His friends never entirely got his obsession with his garden, and they would trample on it more times than he could count, but they would almost always realize it was important to him and try to make things right.

And that, to Rabbit, made them worth sticking around through the slight teasing for.

**Author's Note:**

> I made a few references to a few of the older episodes and one of the movies. X'D Can anyone spot them all?


End file.
